To be so sick of hearing about MIL's money woes?????

[Ineedacleaner]

This may get VERY long.
MIL on benefits has been since her and FIL split up over 20 years ago pretty much constantly. At first it was to bring up her children, ok fair enough, then it was because she had depression, then it was something else and something else....now it is because she has her 2 dogs to look after seriously she has said that out loud to me.

I will give her that a few years ago she had an op and wasn't able to work until she recovered but she was doing a computer course that she stopped half way through in case she passed and they made her get a job.

She is forever pleading poverty but believe me she has no idea what that is. FIL kept her and the boys pretty much until they left school, she took half DH and BIL paper round money off them at 13 and got caught still claiming for them when they started working and then tried to make them pay it back.

SHe always has a job on the side on the go, a bit of cleaning now a bit of home helping none of these ever go through the books and she never declares a penny. LAst year she managed in 6 months to save up the money for a cruise round the gulf of mexico by working on the side.

It just makes me so sometimes, there has been times in past years that DH and I have really really struggled with DH working every hour that he could and we wouldn't have done it any other way but he was so demoralised at times watching his mother sit there with her bloody dogs getting her rent and council tax paid paying minimum amounts on everything because of her benefit book.

She has been caught 3 times now and still does it I would sometimes love to report her but never would.

This rant really comes from the fact that she has been asking BIL for money for one of the dogs vet bills because she says the dog is his he lives 200 miles away and hasn't lived with her for about 10 years she has had the dog for 3.

I worked for the benefits agency in another life and it just makes me mad that genuine people who need the help struggle under constant suspicion because of people like her.

she sounds like a waste of space

DOes it make me a bad DIL cause that made me giggle.

YANBU - it would make me mad too. She probably thinks the state will keep her forever. What did she do before kids?

yanbu this sort of thing makes me so too.

Give me her details i will report her...

Ooo, that kind of person drives us bonkers. We are so careful with our money because I'm at home with DD. We pay so much in tax to support people who really are taking the you-know-what! Shop her. Go on - you know you want to!

I would shop her, I really would.

In the meantime, I am going to sit back and wait for this to kick off, because it will, this being MN and all that.

Gulf of what ?? Blardy hell; it's hardly like Mrs Miggins on incapacity doing a bit of cleaning on the quiet to pay for the odd coach trip to margate or something.

dh is self employed and declares every bloody hour he works, every cheque received. He could in theory employ me as some kind of assistant and pay me to gain a tax benefit, but although I help a bit, it's not enough to justify setting it up.

It angers me a great deal, this sort of illegal scrounging. Shop her, or at least talk to her and say somebody local like her got caught recently. Embroider it a bit and scare the old bag witless.

NSC

She has been caught three times to date.

Sorry, didn't read properly ! What does your dh think ?

YANBU - that would drive me crazy! I think you should shop her too actually.

HSC DH gets so angry about it, he has worked so hard for me to be able to stay at home with the children while they are small and she sits there getting it all. SHe usually just does a little bit of cleaning on the side but when she does want to save for something she will just take on something else, when she saved for her cruise she actuall took on what was a proper part time job not just an hour or so here and there.

Don't get me wrong she is a lovely woman and will give her time to anyone and will be at her friends and fmailies side in a flash if they need her but she wouldn't give a penny to the starving. She expects everything for nothing.

The thing is she is not actually lazy she works quite hard day to day and at her jobs on the side she just doesn't see why she should have to go back to work and pay full rent etc because she knows she will struggle more.

Do you know the irony is that when she had DH she went back to work much to the disgust of her own MIL then they moved and she had BIL so stopped working and pretty much hasn't done an HONEST day since.

I know the feeling, my MIL is like this, never worked a day in her life but complains constantly about the size of her flat that benefits pay the rent on. Own mother is similar, always complaining she's so broke but managing about six foreign holidays a year. (We're going to the IOW for a week).
No advice, but you're not alone.

Give me her details - I'll report her!!

I'm sat here with a PILE of letters asking for proof of this and proof of that because I'm on benefits and they keep stopping my money/lowering it/trying to evict me... I'm pig sick of being seen as a scrounger and a lazy arse when in actual fact, I'm waiting to start my career in September!!